The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

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5.0 out of 5 starsBrief Encounters ...
Alison Wells: Stories to Read on the Train

Anyone who has ever travelled by train will know just how difficult it is not to fantasise and invent lives for their fellow passengers. As a writer who seems to spend a considerable amount of time reading and writing on trains and at stations, I know that I am as guilty of failing to prevent myself from doing this as...

3.0 out of 5 starsSuz
Stories about trains to read on the train. Some are insightful, some heavy, some fun & some sad, but each story is is aimed to stop you being bored on your commute... or while you cook, or baby has a nap. Which ever you will find delight in this sure way to keep you entertained.

Anyone who has ever travelled by train will know just how difficult it is not to fantasise and invent lives for their fellow passengers. As a writer who seems to spend a considerable amount of time reading and writing on trains and at stations, I know that I am as guilty of failing to prevent myself from doing this as the next person - especially if that person happens to be Alison Wells, who has taken a sample of such imagined lives and transformed them into this collection of short stories.There are five examples with the obviously common theme of travel, yet each one personal and intimate, and individually observed with a practised eye and transcribed with a sure hand.

The stories are written with verve and a restrained energy and allow us an insight into the miasma of thoughts and feelings that surely cloud each carriage like a pre-smoking-ban fog.These moments are brief encounters of the finest kind; very rewarding and yet leaving us hungry for more.

Beautifully observed and crafted, this is wonderful little collection and well worth the journey.

Stories about trains to read on the train. Some are insightful, some heavy, some fun & some sad, but each story is is aimed to stop you being bored on your commute... or while you cook, or baby has a nap. Which ever you will find delight in this sure way to keep you entertained.

These stories are about journeys, simple commuting journeys when the mind wanders unrestrained, and the journeys of great importance, when the mind is concentrated on what is waiting at the end.My favourite, I think is the one that starts in Crewe. Perhaps because it's an experience so many of us have had, and one that we choose to push into that lumber room of unwanted memories. In `Some other platform' Alison Wells takes us on a poignant journey where hope end expectation transform a dingy mainline station, the grime of a mainline train, only to have the journey end, hope crushed in...the dirt and grime of a mainline station.These are little chunks of somebody's life, mine, or any reader's. They are complex, like life, with always something dark or dull behind the humour. The writing style is full of images, one after the other, like the landscape rolling past a train window.I very much enjoyed these stories and only wished there had been more.